Ekeh
in a keynote address to the retreat organized by the House of Representatives
Committee on Electoral and Political Parties Matter last Friday, at the
Transcorp Hilton, Abuja, as part of programme to mark 17th Democracy Day anniversary,
insisting that adopt of e-Voting would deepen democratic culture during
elections.

The
retreat led by the Speaker, House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara also
has Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Prof. Mahmood
Yakubu; Senate Committee Chairman on INEC, Senator Abubakar Kyari represented
by Senator Abu Gumel; Chairperson of the House Committee on Electoral and
Political Parties Matter, Hon. Mrs. Aisha Dukku as well as other distinguished
members of the committee.

Ekeh,
also disclosed that with the rapid pace of global technological advancements,
Nigeria stands to reap a lot of benefits from the deployment of e-voting,
stressing that the initiative will go a long way in reducing litigations and
strengthening the faith of Nigerians in the electoral process.

In
his paper entitled “New thoughts, ideas
and innovations on use of ICT in elections” Ekeh affirmed that the gains
recorded with the use of the card readers in the 2015 general elections goes a
long way to show that with the adoption of e-voting, the country will take a
huge leap towards sound democratic governance.

“In
your life, there must be a little bit of disruption for you to move forward.
The country is ripe for transition to electronic voting. A lot of us are in
this business because technology does not lie – it’s either you are right or
you are wrong. With the use of the card readers in the last general elections,
we saw a significant reduction in electoral fraud and other electoral
malpractices. However, a few challenges were also encountered as no technology can
be said to be 100 per cent perfect,” Ekeh said.

The
Zinox boss equally said that a country cannot move forward where the elected
leaders who take decisions are not the choice of the people.

“It’s
like running a company and you are a shareholder in that company. If your son
is not qualified to lead, you will be destroying that company by manipulating
the system to favour that son. So, this was the essence of our submission to
INEC on the adoption of electronic voting – that things should be done
professionally with your support and that of the entire nation,” he canvassed.

Today,
he pointed out, there are about 774 local governments in the country and each
one with about 10,800 polling units, some of which are in the riverine areas,
stressing that even if INEC purchases 1,000 vehicles, it will still find it
difficult logistics-wise to cover all the areas and this leaves the process
open to manipulation by emergency contractors as INEC lacks the requisite
man-power.

“If
finally adopted and implemented, electronic voting will ensure that you now
have reasonable infrastructure to handle this. While you have the mobile units
and active screens at the polling units, the database of registrants or
eligible voters is sitting at the national database of INEC. Once a voter’s
number is entered at the polling unit, it pulls up the details of the voter
from the list of registered voters,” he said.

For
him, verification will no longer be a problem and during voting, once a voter
clicks on the icon of a chosen party, the same information hits the INEC
back-end.

“This
will go a long way in reducing litigations as INEC can provide verifiable
evidence in court,” Ekeh advised, emphasizing that with this technology in
place, voters will no longer have to travel back to their wards to cast their
votes.

INEC
on the other hand, he said, could also monitor the entire process easily as
each electronic voting device is equipped with a tracker and could be
configured to shut down immediately voting ends.

Tracing
the country’s march and transition towards electronic voting, the digital ICT
entrepreneur examined the benefits and challenges of the Direct Data Capture
(DDC) machines used during the 2007 elections and the painstaking process which
eventually culminated in the use of the card readers for the 2015 general
elections.

“When
Prof. Jega came on board, a decision was made to do a proper data capturing of
eligible voters. We started the process and I must thank the National Assembly
as they supported us despite being a local company. We designed the technology
and ended up working for everybody in deploying the Direct Data Capture (DDC)
machines nationwide including the 600 servers. These helped promote the concept
of one man, one voter card, streamlined the electoral process and also reduced
multiple registration, ineligible and under-age registrants – we did a lot of
these from the back-end. As a result, we were able to deliver a strong database
which reduced arguments and other related issues,” he said.

It
is from this point, Ekeh said, Nigeria moved to the use of card readers,
underscoring the fact that back then, there were calls for proposals for
electronic voting which the National Assembly to a large extent did not
consider as the country was seen as not ripe to embrace the technology then,
stressing that most of the issues encountered with the card readers had to do
with the National Assembly and the budget for INEC as well as the late release
of funds after election dates had been set, among other disruptions.

“So,
INEC had no time to conduct a mock election using the card readers. I had
recommended a regional mock then as this would have helped smoothen the
process,” he said, pleading with the National Assembly to support INEC in its
effort to adopt electronic voting.

“Until
we embrace this disruption, the nation will not move forward in this regard
because the government is the decider of the future of the people. If you
appoint a CEO who cannot read a balance sheet, it’s impossible for that company
to grow. This is the crisis the country is currently facing in the knowledge
business,” he submitted.